The monastery is quite an imposing structure and far more modern then i expected. If you are wanting to get the whole structure in your frame, you are going to have to use a wide angle lens or do some stitching.

For the photos below, i had to walk a ways up the main road that leads to the abbey. Walking some distance back would be your third option of trying to get as much of the abbey in your frame.

Below are two granite slabs that have been used as a sign for the abbey.

Going inside the abbey, you are met with absolute silence. You can hear a pin drop. The fact that it was so quiet inside, made me feel like i was hammering nails into wood when i was taking photos with my X-Pro1.

The shutter on my X-Pro1 is certainly not as noisy compared to the DSLRs i have owned, but it still makes noise. I felt so conscious when i was taking photos and just could not bring myself to use it when we stepped into the church of the abbey.

Luckily, i had my little X10 with me.

The X10 possesses a leaf shutter (http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Leaf_shutter) and is dead silent. I remember when i first started to shoot with the X10, i thought i was not even taking photos, despite pressing the shutter button. It is that silent.

Though it seems like a lot of light was coming through the windows in the church, i had to boost my ISO to 1000 to get a good shutter speed in order to avoid camera shake.

I did have to do quite a bit of work to reduce the highlights in the photos.

Overall, the photos came out pretty good for the conditions that i had to shoot in. I could have played around with them a bit more in post, but i think i did what i could.

The photo below is compromised of 4 photos stitched together vertically. As i said before, you really need a wide angle lens to get this structure in your frame properly. The 18mm would have been wonderful in this case.

There is a large amount of land surrounding this abbey and when everything is in full bloom, it must be absolutely gorgeous.